Angry after top New Orleans police brass called him an uncooperative witness to his wife's slaying, Paul Gailiunas on Wednesday provided the first public account of what he saw that bloody morning inside the couple's Marigny home.

Gailiunas suffered three bullet wounds on Jan. 4 after a stranger invaded their home and shot his wife, film-maker Helen Hill, he said. Hill's murder, along with nearly a dozen others that week, enraged the city and helped spark thousands of people to march on City Hall.

Gailiunas, the only known witness to the slaying, said he was outraged at public comments by Superintendent Warren Riley and other top police officials. In a local television interview aired Tuesday night, Riley said Gailiunas was the key to solving the murder but had left town and "refused" to speak with police by phone. But Riley spoke with one of Gailiunas' relatives for a half-hour Wednesday, assuring the family that Gailiunas is not a suspect in the crime, a police spokesman confirmed.

In an interview from South Carolina on Wednesday, Gailiunas provided the following account of the 5:30 a.m. shootings:

Gailiunas, 35, said his wife, 36, was sleeping in one room, and he was in another with their 2-year-old son. That morning, he awoke in the family's shotgun house on the corner of North Rampart and Spain streets, and heard his wife's distressed voice.

"I thought she was having a bad dream," Gailiunas said, his voice wavering with emotion. "I got up and saw her struggling with him and he shot her."

Gailiunas described seeing a man with a medium build, but could not provide a detailed description, he said.

Gailiunas said he grabbed their son, ran into the bathroom and hid. The gunman chased him and fired several shots. Gailiunas suffered a graze wound on his cheek, a wound from a bullet that passed through his left forearm and a wound to his right hand.

"In my right hand, two bones were broken by a bullet, " Gailiunas said. "My fingers are weak and stiff and I have some nerve damage."

Gailiunas said the intruder must have entered the home through the back door. The front door was locked, as was a front door gate.

"We always kept everything locked," he said. "I was nervous about crime in the area."

Gailiunas said it's possible his wife had gone into the back yard, letting their pet pot-bellied pig out.

"Once in a while, my wife or I would take her out in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom," he said. "Maybe she was just taking the pig out and saw something."

Gailiunas said some of the circumstances after his wife's murder are murky -- he doesn't even remember if he was wearing his glasses at the time.

Changing stories

Riley and Tony Cannatella, commander of the operations bureau, said in interviews Tuesday with a local television station that Gailiunas left town immediately after his release from the hospital and was hard to reach.

"We have not had a detailed conversation with him about this incident," Riley told WDSU Channel 6. He added that Gailiunas has "basically refused to speak to us on the phone."

Cannatella said, "We've been unsuccessful in contacting him to get him back." Cannatella said Gailiunas "left a day after the homicide, after he was released from the hospital."

Gailiunas called those statements false. Gailiunas' brother-in-law, Jacob Hill, called NOPD officials to complain Wednesday morning, and later received a phone call from Riley.

In that conversation, Riley told Jacob Hill that Gailiunas is not a suspect in the murder.

"I was irritated," Jacob Hill said. "But I was pleased that he took the time to call. He explained things, and I am going to take him at his word that this investigation is going to move on. I said that if Paul needs to return to New Orleans, he will."

A Police Department spokesman confirmed Riley's call.

"He was asked to call," Sgt. Joe Narcisse said. "They had a conversation about the investigation. The superintendent explained that at this time, the husband is not a suspect."

Giving statements

Gailiunas said he spoke with investigators after his wife's murder and gave a statement while in the hospital recovering from his gunshot wounds. He said he later spoke twice with detectives at the police station, once giving them a blow-by-blow account of the evening in a taped statement. He gave them several contact numbers, he said.

"They were reassuring to me that there wasn't anything else they needed," Gailiunas said.

He said he left New Orleans four days after the murder to attend his wife's funeral.

Gailiunas said a detective left him a voicemail message Monday, the first message he has received since leaving New Orleans.

Gailiunas said he caught up with a detective on the phone later Tuesday, before the local television interview aired. When he learned that police on Tuesday called him uncooperative, and said he was the key to solving the murder, Gailiunas said he was devastated.

Lt. Joe Meisch, commander of the homicide division, said Wednesday afternoon that investigators had been in constant contact with Jacob Hill, who has been Gailiunas's de facto spokesman.

"As of last night, we did speak directly to Gailiunas," Meisch said Wednesday.

Meisch declined to comment on whether police asked Gailiunas to return to New Orleans. "I can only tell you it is an open investigation," he said.

Police earlier confirmed they are pursuing a lead that would mesh with the husband's account of a stranger breaking in. That morning, officers were just a few houses away at the time of the shooting, following up on a report of an attempted burglary.

About 5:10 a.m., about 20 minutes before the shootings, a Dallas woman sleeping at a bed-and-breakfast four doors away from Hill's home was awakened by a knock on her door.

The woman opened it to find a man with a gun, she said in an earlier interview. The man struggled to get inside the room, but the woman and her husband slammed the door and the man fled.

Police were at the bed-and-breakfast when a report of Hill's killing came across their radios.

Police have declined to say whether the two incidents are linked. But investigators are pursuing that possibility, police sources close to the investigation have said on condition of anonymity.

A husband's theories

Gailiunas said he believes the intruder he saw was trying to flee the bed-and-breakfast and ended up in his back yard.

"What can I say, the timing is close," he said. "It is very plausible that a person was trying to get out of the area. We didn't have any people that would be out to hurt us."

He offered one other theory, but said it seemed less plausible.

"Maybe someone knew I was a doctor and had money in the house," he said. "But they didn't take anything."

For now, Gailiunas and his son are staying with relatives in South Carolina. He plans to move to British Columbia within a few days so he can be with his family.

"I'm just going to try and work with my mother-in-law and finish some of Helen's films," he said. "I think I'll go back to medicine. I don't know, probably. I just don't know."

He said he does not want to return to New Orleans, but said he will at the request of the police. "I'm scared of it," he said. "I don't want to be around anything that has to do with my old apartment, with anything that will remind me of my wife. I want to go away to a safe place with my baby."

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Brendan McCarthy can be reached at bmccarthy@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3301.